Author: Lou Thomas

NME Music News, Reviews, Videos, Galleries, Tickets and Blogs | NME.COM

Religious rituals have long inspired horror films. From genre classics such as The Exorcist and The Omen right up to forthcoming British sizzler Saint Maud, the links between organised religion, a belief in the supernatural and a damn good scare are clear. Often, stories derived from Christianity inform horror. With The Vigil, debut writer-director Keith Thomas offers a new perspective by delving into an esoteric practice from the Jewish faith.

In Brooklyn, unemployed Yacov (Dave Davis from Bomb City and The Walking Dead) is offered $400 to act as a shomer for the night, a job which requires him to guard the dead body of Holocaust survivor Rubin Litvak until dawn. With trepidation, Yacov dutifully enters Litvak’s home in the Hasidic Jewish Boro Park neighbourhood. He is disconcerted by Litvak’s widow, played with a chilling blend of dementia and foresight by Lynn Cohen (Munich, The Hunger Games: Catching Fire) but decides to settle in for the night against his better judgement.

Over the course of the night, Yacov’s mental stability and faith are tested by series of visions. An early scene had already suggested Yacov renounced strict adherence to his faith and during the vigil recurring memories of a horrible incident of racially-motivated assault torment him and suggests why he feels inclined towards secular life. Litvak’s own horrifying memories of the Holocaust repeat and blur into Yacov’s, and both the viewer and Yacov have to constantly question what is seen and heard. Determining what is real or imagined is often an audience challenge in horror and Thomas is adroit at exploiting our fears.

Before he turned filmmaker, Thomas studied at Rabbi school, and researched the Boro Park community thoroughly before shooting there, going far to make the action to feel and look authentic even when it’s at its most startling. The ugly screeching of Australian composer Michael Yezerski’s anxiety-inducing industrial score, meanwhile, is suitably nightmarish and cinematographer Zach Kuperstein’s artfully lit scenes keep us guessing what will be next to emerge from the shadows.

Ultimately though, it’s a shame that Yacov himself is not a hugely interesting protagonist, even if we do recoil at what’s happening to him. Overall, The Vigil is a modest entry into the horror canon, chiefly of interest because of its fresh perspective, while providing an auspicious start to Thomas’s feature career.

Details

• Director: Keith Thomas
• Starring: Dave Davis, Menashe Lustig, Malky Goldman, Lynn Cohen
• Release date: July 31

The post ‘The Vigil’ review: reality-blurring horror that tests faith and exploits our fears appeared first on NME Music News, Reviews, Videos, Galleries, Tickets and Blogs | NME.COM.

NME Music News, Reviews, Videos, Galleries, Tickets and Blogs | NME.COM

Some 30 years after Goodfellas exploded onto screens  and became cinema’s greatest Mafia informant story, we meet The Traitor. Co-written and directed by veteran filmmaker Marco Bellocchio, this epic may not quite match up to Martin Scorsese’s classic but it has its own seductive blend of earthiness and style. It’s a purer more authentic thrill-ride that offers a different experience to Scorsese’s Italian-American blend of scuzzy glamour.

Pierfrancesco Favino (Angels & Demons, World War Z) plays real-life Sicilian Mafia boss Tommaso Buscetta. In 1980, Buscetta is living in Brazil, having begun the film at a summit where rival mob families divide the spoils of their lucrative heroin business. Unfortunately, one of Buscetta’s rivals, Totò Riina (Calì Nicola), sees an opportunity and exploits his absence from Italy. Soon, Riina has scores of Buscetta’s men and associates killed. A violent, lengthy montage shows many of these assassinations in gory detail. The killings continue before Buscetta loses two sons in the conflict and is eventually arrested in 1983. By June 1984, Buscetta has been extradited back to Italy and – following a suicide attempt – finally turns informant.

Buscetta divulges secrets to judge Giovanni Falcone (Fausto Russo Alesi), a persistent thorn in the side of the mob, with his own high profile. Buscetta explains how the Cosa Nostra (Sicilian Mafia) is structured, who the key players are and how the decisions are made. He names names and confirms crimes so that a wealth of secrets can snowball into a major legal case. Buscetta’s evidence turns into a lively, compelling courtroom drama where witnesses are catcalled from defendants in adjacent cells, accusations of murder are made and crimes fiercely denied. Justice is seen to be done, though it comes at a cost.

At two and a half hours, The Traitor is a lengthy saga that packs in a lot of juicy criminal detail. It’s not a film to watch casually and demands the kind of forensic attention to detail Falcone makes use of throughout. Character actor Favino, who plays Buscetta, has often been seen in smaller parts, but he excels here as he did as the protagonist in 2015’s Suburra, a very different but equally great Italian gangster thriller. Nicola, too, deserves plaudits as the chilling Riina.

Bellocchio presents a gripping, intriguing mob saga that contains vivid scenes of murderous carnage as well as studied, factual rigour. In the end, it’s hard not to dwell on the organisation that made the actions depicted in The Traitor acceptable to those who carried them out and, by extension, the overarching system that helps perpetuate it. These thoughts, if ruminated on too deeply, can be as chilling the deeds of individuals in the film.

Details

• Director: Marco Bellocchio
• Starring: Pierfrancesco Favino, Luigi Lo Cascio, Fausto Russo Alesi
• Release date: July 24 (Digital and virtual theatrical screenings available)

The post ‘The Traitor’ review: authentic Italian gangster thriller is an offer you shouldn’t refuse appeared first on NME Music News, Reviews, Videos, Galleries, Tickets and Blogs | NME.COM.

NME Music News, Reviews, Videos, Galleries, Tickets and Blogs | NME.COM

G hosts of War is a bad film, from its almost comically blunt title onwards. Yes, the ghosts are not just metaphorical memories but also actual spooky apparitions. The real shame is the ghosts aren’t that scary and the war scenes aren’t that gripping. If you’re going to commit to a title that gives the whole game away, at least fully commit to it in the manner of, say, Snakes on a Plane.

Directing his first film since 2004’s The Butterfly Effect, screenwriter Eric Bress provides us with a Second World War film set in Nazi-occupied France. It’s 1944 and five American soldiers are ordered to look after a chateau that was previously used by the Nazi top brass. Upon arriving at the plush and well-stocked abode, the quintet are disconcerted. The soldiers they relieve of duty are keen to leave pronto and bizarrely admit they weren’t even sleeping in the comfortable bedrooms upstairs during their stay. Soon, our gang are beset by an attack from German soldiers and nocturnal terrors that test their sanity. But is everything as it seems?

We chiefly see things from the point of view of Chris, who’s played by Brenton Thwaites (Pirates of the Caribbean: Salazar’s Revenge and Gods of Egypt). This choice seems mildly unusual, given that Theo Rossi (from Sons of Anarchy), who plays tough guy Kirk here is surely the more charismatic actor. Skylar Astin from the first two Pitch Perfects and Glee, is also more interesting in his part as brainbox Eugene. Still, the actors do their best with rote, unimaginative dialogue and somewhat thin characterisation. They’re not helped by some unconvincing CGI and other scenes that seem bizarrely over-lit, a bad choice for any film but especially anything aiming for horror, a genre that so often relies on distinct moods of shadow and darkness.

Fans of either The Butterfly Effect or Final Destination 2, which Bress wrote, will probably assume he’s filled this new film with fiendish scares, gore and a clever sci-fi mystery to keep us guessing. Up to a point, he has. There are some gruesome scenes and the ghosts do provide some terror but in trying to combine a war film and a horror film, it feels a bit feeble. Mildness is fine in a drama of sensitivity and grace but that is not what’s needed here. It’s certainly nowhere near as fun or gruesome as Overlord, Julius Avery’s far more entertaining 2018 US-soldiers-behind-enemy-lines Second World War film. That aside, when the inevitable twist does come, it’s so lame it’ll make most viewers roll their eyes for the remaining 20 minutes of the runtime.

Details

• Director: Eric Bress
• Starring: Brenton Thwaites, Theo Rossi, Kyle Gallner
• Release date: July 17 (Digital)

The post ‘Ghosts Of War’ review: soldiers get spooked in supernatural WWII horror appeared first on NME Music News, Reviews, Videos, Galleries, Tickets and Blogs | NME.COM.

NME Music News, Reviews, Videos, Galleries, Tickets and Blogs | NME.COM

Lovers of friendly, fluffy creatures lured in by the suggestion of this French thriller’s English title are set for a grim surprise. There are just two animals with any screen time worth mentioning in Only The Animals, and one of those is shot dead. As for humans in director Dominik Moll’s foreign language puzzler, well, one is murdered, another takes their own life and all struggle with unrequited love, greed or temptation.

After a short, lively opening scene in which a goat is transported through Abidjan, Ivory Coast, on a man’s back, we’re transported to Causse Méjean, a rural plateau in southern France caught in the grip of a snowy winter. Alice, played by Laure Calamy from acclaimed Netflix series Call My Agent!, is a farmer’s wife who sells insurance to – and is having an affair with – Joseph (Damien Bonnard, fresh from energetic urban reworking Les Misérables). Glum Joseph is still grieving the loss of his mother the year before, but evidently has other, newer worries on his mind too. Meanwhile, prominent Parisian Evelyne (Valeria Bruni Tedeschi) has gone missing on the plateau, with only her abandoned car offering any clues as to her whereabouts. But does Alice’s grumpy husband Michel (Denis Ménochet) know anything about it? And why is he so keen to sit in his farmyard office and miss dinner?

After watching events unfold from Alice’s point of view, we learn more as the film takes on Joseph’s narrative. Eventually, we swap again to follow Marion (Nadia Tereszkiewicz), a beautiful waitress who becomes obsessed with Evelyne after they embark on a short but passionate affair. Finally, we dig into the life of Armand (Guy Roger N’Drin), a con artist in Abidjan who has his own romantic problems.

Filmmakers have enlivened their action using different character perspectives on the same events since iconic Japanese director Akira Kurosawa made Rashomon in 1950. Yet the technique has never really gone away. In 1997, Quentin Tarantino made Jackie Brown – arguably his best film – using similar techniques. In 2014, David Fincher kept audiences guessing with his atmospheric mystery thriller Gone Girl.

While Moll’s film isn’t as revelatory as Rashomon or as stylishly accomplished as Gone Girl, he’s still crafted an engaging, well-acted drama out of Colin Niel’s source novel. Ménochet, who gave a masterclass in malevolence during 2017’s Custody and will soon be seen in Wes Anderson’s The French Dispatch, is first-rate. N’Drin unexpectedly evokes sympathy as he falls foul of bad luck, love and his poor life choices. While Tereszkiewicz’s depiction of the callow, lovesick young adult we have all been is heartbreaking.

With its snowy setting, murder and intrigue, Only the Animals has the air of a French Fargo. There’s also a Scandi-noir flavour to the aesthetic, so it’s no surprise to learn that Moll also directed two episodes of The Tunnel, the British-French remake of Swedish TV hit The Bridge. If that still doesn’t sound creepy enough, then Benedikt Schiefer’s brooding score will help to exacerbate the dark deeds on screen. This is not a movie for those feeling the effects of isolation.

Details

• Director: Dominik Moll
• Starring: Denis Ménochet, Laure Calamy, Damien Bonnard
• Released: May 29 (Curzon Home Cinema)

The post ‘Only The Animals’ review: brooding, dread-filled mystery hides a deep, dark secret appeared first on NME Music News, Reviews, Videos, Galleries, Tickets and Blogs | NME.COM.

NME Music News, Reviews, Videos, Galleries, Tickets and Blogs | NME.COM

Director Ciarán Cassidy’s fascinating documentary Jihad Jane investigates how a vulnerable American woman ended up sentenced to 10 years in prison for conspiracy to commit murder.

Following a row with her boyfriend Kurt on holiday in Amsterdam, Colleen LaRose hooked up with a Muslim man staying in the same hotel. Her interest in Islam was piqued by this brief encounter, and once home in Pennsburg, Pennsylvania, LaRose signed up to a Muslim dating site. From there, she began spending hours each week delving into videos depicting Western attacks on Muslims and started posting comments on YouTube as ‘JihadJane’ in June 2008.

By the time of her arrest in October 2009, LaRose, along with five other conspirators, was planning to murder Swedish artist Lars Vilks after a fatwa had been placed on him for drawing the Islamic prophet Muhammad with a dog’s head. Cassidy’s film shows a clip of an Al Qaida video offering $150,000 for Vilks’ life. Among LaRose’s accomplices was Pakistani immigrant Mohammad Hassan Khalid, who at 15 became the youngest person ever to be prosecuted for terrorism offences in the US, and Jamie Paulin Ramirez – so-called Jihad Jamie – another American woman from a troubled background.

Over a tight 94 minutes, we hear from key players in the conspiracy, with LaRose herself first heard by phone from Tallahassee prison in Florida – and later seen upon her release in November 2018. Relatives of the conspirators, attorneys and FBI agents involved in the case fill in details – and we hear horrific accounts of LaRose’s upbringing, including that she was repeatedly raped by her father as a young child. It is no surprise that every subsequent romantic relationship LaRose enters into seems destined for disaster. There is also a heartbreaking scene in which LaRose phones her son Christian, only for him to be uninterested with her attempts to rekindle a maternal connection.

It’s not a perfect doc and there are avenues of inquiry that could have been explored which aren’t. It remains a mystery who Eagle Eye, a conspirator seemingly named after a Shia LaBeouf action film about terrorism, actually was. That aside, it would be interesting to know exactly what LaRose did in mainland Europe after she left Paulin Ramirez in Ireland and immediately before she returned to the US and her arrest.

Regardless of such holes, Cassidy’s film is a harrowing one that avoids sensationalism. LaRose and her co-conspirators aren’t excused for their murderous intent but neither are they demonised. Interviews with protagonists are fair and sensitive, while archive news reports of the case are used sparingly. By the conclusion of Jihad Jane, we’re left in no doubt of the long-term and far-reaching emotional consequences of embracing extremism. We can also begin to understand why hideous life experiences might push people to pursue actions most of us consider unthinkable.

Details

• Director: Ciaran Cassidy
• Starring: Colleen LaRose, Jamie Paulin Ramirez, Lars Vilks
• Released: May 11 (VOD)

The post ‘Jihad Jane’ review: lies, deceit and murder in a tale of terrorist seduction appeared first on NME Music News, Reviews, Videos, Galleries, Tickets and Blogs | NME.COM.

NME Music News, Reviews, Videos, Galleries, Tickets and Blogs | NME.COM

Johnny Depp’s definitive role as Captain Jack Sparrow in the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise tends to overshadow his body of work. Aside from his portrayal of villainous wizard Gellert Grindelwald in the Fantastic Beasts films, it’s something of a challenge to name another memorable Depp character without Googling first. Unhelpfully, he’s all too often stuck in forgettable films, like 2018 crime biopic City of Lies or little-known comedy drama from the same year The Professor. New eco-disaster drama Minamata is, sadly, no different.

Adapted from the best-selling non-fiction book of the same name, Minamata sees Depp play drunk, amphetamine-addicted photographer W. Eugene Smith. It’s 1971 and the master snapper is famous for his extraordinary work with Life magazine, but finds himself living in a New York City hovel with blacked-out windows, smoking while replaying turbulent Second World War memories over and over in his head. After an angry row with Life editor Bob Hayes (Bill Nighy), Smith is wallowing at home when Japanese anti-nuclear activist Aileen Mioko turns up to shoot a long overdue Fujifilm endorsement. Mioko convinces Smith to return with her to Japan and photograph the unwell and deformed residents of Minamata, a fishing village near the southern tip of Japan. Local families had been emotionally and physically devastated by the nearby Chisso factory, which had been dumping toxic chemicals into the water supply. Smith and Mioko work together diligently, painstakingly meeting residents to get the full story over several months and – of course – fall in love in the process.

Perhaps the most exciting moment is an illicit dash around the factory hospital, filching documents and snapping patients. Large public protest scenes where residents confront duplicitous factory executives also add much-needed tension. The sad, grim consequences of Chisso’s mercury poisoning – what became known as Minamata disease – would kill 1,784 people of 2,265 contaminated. Smith himself died in 1978, with the disease contributing to his death, while Chisso only admitted culpability after Smith’s Life photo essay made headlines around the world.

Depp, half-Captain Birdseye half-raggedy art student, plays Smith as an angry rebel in search of answers. But his ‘drunk-acting’ – more A Level drama club than Academy Award nominee – is less than convincing. Opposite him, Minami Hinase is impressive in a less showy part as calm Aileen – a kind, gentle soul in difficult circumstances. Minamata’s downfall has nothing to do with the performances, however. Instead, its main problem is a lack of on-screen urgency, which minimises the harrowing drama of the real-life events. Certainly, it pales into insignificance when compared to Todd Haynes’ upcoming Dark Waters, a movie which tackles another recent environmental catastrophe in gripping fashion. Sadly, Minamata is yet another forgettable Depp B-movie destined for the bargain bucket.

Details

• Director: Andrew Levitas
• Starring: Johnny Depp, Bill Nighy, Hiroyuki Sanada
• Release date: February 21 (Berlin International Film Festival)

The post ‘Minamata’ review: sluggish eco-disaster drama is yet another forgettable Johnny Depp B-movie appeared first on NME Music News, Reviews, Videos, Galleries, Tickets and Blogs | NME.COM.

NME Music News, Reviews, Videos, Galleries, Tickets and Blogs | NME.COM

With films, as with people, sometimes it’s the quiet ones you’ve got to watch. Little Joe arrives without fanfare or controversy but with a lead performance that won Emily Beecham best actress at Cannes and the growing reputation of Austrian director Jessica Hausner (Amour Fou, Lourdes).

Beecham plays Alice, a single mother working as a skilled and dedicated horticulturalist at a corporation developing new plant species. Alice has created a striking red flower that, if treated with care, can make its owner happy. But is that all it does? Having named the plant Little Joe after her son (Kit Connor – young Elton John in Rocketman), she breaks protocol and takes one home to him as a gift. Soon, Alice’s colleague Bella (Kerry Fox) thinks she sees suspicious personality changes in her dog Bello that she attributes to the new plant, which otherwise proves a hit with their employers. Meanwhile, colleague Chris (Ben Whishaw, best known for voicing Paddington and playing Q in recent Bond films) appears to be falling in love with Alice, just as Joe begins to hit it off with classmate Selma (Jessie Mae Alonzo).

For a film with a lot happening under the surface, Little Joe rarely, if ever, reveals much in the way of ferocity or volume. It’s a work of subtlety and mood rather than overblown drama. A minutely calibrated line reading here or a shift of the body there are more important to Hausner than histrionics. While its most obvious influences may be classic sci-fi epics Invasion of the Body Snatchers and The Day of the Triffids, it has a chilly, austere tone that may be too cold and unfriendly for some viewers.

As work-obsessed Alice, Beecham is throughly deserving of her Cannes triumph. It’s not a showy part – a mother who juggles motherhood, a busy job and several layers of emotional uncertainty –  but her deft, nuanced performance is well complemented by the consistently impressive Whishaw. Elsewhere, Fox (who plays Bella) offers a new take on the classic “Am I crazy or is everyone else?” trope, but here it feels fresh and interesting.

To marshal a film of quiet moments and deep, potentially ambiguous meaning is perhaps as difficult a job as tackling monster egos and gargantuan budgets. Here, Hausner proves she has the chops for both, while her intelligent, thoughtful film poses questions about everything from corporate influence to motherhood to mental health. Little Joe may end up having the same affect on audiences as its titular plants – increased happiness all around.

• Director: Jessica Hausner
• Starring: Emily Beecham, Ben Whishaw, Kerry Fox
• Release date: 21 February 2020

The post ‘Little Joe’ review: slow-burning sci-fi about super-powered plants eventually bears fruit appeared first on NME Music News, Reviews, Videos, Galleries, Tickets and Blogs | NME.COM.